A refrigerator is a device for low temperature storage of food and may be configured to provide freezing storage or cold storage according to the type of food which a user wants to store.
The inside of the refrigerator is continuously supplied by cold air. The cold air is continuously generated by a heat exchange process with a refrigerant which goes through a process of compression-condensation-expansion-evaporation. The cold air supplied to the inside of the refrigerator is evenly transferred by convection to maintain the food in the refrigerator at a desired temperature.
Generally, a main body of the refrigerator has a rectangular parallelepiped shape of which the front surface is opened and the inside of the main body may be provided with a refrigerating space and a freezing space. Further, the front surface of the main body may be provided with a refrigerating space door and a freezing space door for selective accessing of a portion of the refrigerator. A storage space in the refrigerator may be provided with multiple drawers, shelves, receiving boxes, etc., in which various food may be stored in an optimal condition.
Traditionally, a top mount type refrigerator has a freezing space positioned in an upper portion and has a refrigerating space positioned in a lower portion. Recently, however, for user convenience, a bottom freezer type refrigerator in which the freezing space is positioned in a lower portion has been released. In the case of the bottom freezer type refrigerator, a frequently used refrigerating space is positioned in an upper portion and a relatively less used freezing space is positioned in a lower position. Thus a user may conveniently use the refrigerating space. However, since the freezing space is positioned in the lower portion, the bottom freezer type refrigerator has a problem in that a user needs to bend over to open the freezing space door to remove ice.
To solve the above problem, recently, a refrigerator has been released in which an ice dispenser is installed at the refrigerating space door positioned in the upper portion of the bottom freezer type refrigerator. In this case, the refrigerating space door or the inside of the refrigerating space may be provided with an ice machine.
The ice machine may include an ice space which includes an ice tray that generates ice, an ice bucket in which the generated ice is stored, and a transfer assembly transferring the ice stored in the ice bucket to the dispenser.
The ice bucket may be drawn into the ice space or drawn out of the ice space while sliding through the opened front surface of the ice space. Further, the refrigerator may include a locking device which locks the ice bucket to prevent the ice bucket from being drawn out of the ice space by itself.
The existing locking device for the ice bucket is provided with a projection fixed at one side thereof and prevents the ice bucket from being drawn out of the ice space by itself by locking or unlocking a locking portion. The locking part is locked to the projection, or from the projection, by a spring and an opening button.
However, the existing locking device as described above is inconvenient because operating the opening button requires both hands. Further, the existing locking device has a complicated structure due to the spring and the opening button being separately installed and thus has a high failure rate, increased cost of materials, etc.
Further, since the existing locking device uses a metal spring, when the locking device is used for a long period of time, the locking device may have reduced elastic force due to spring aging or may not operate due to spring corrosion. As a result, the operating performance of the ice bucket may be reduced.